


racing time

by dorypop



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Has No Chill, Adam Parrish Is Trying His Best, Adam Parrish Loves Ronan Lynch, And angst, Dramatic Irony, F/M, Here we go, M/M, Multi, POV Adam Parrish, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, and feelings, but also there's kind of a plot, but well, i wasn't even going to write a fic today, i'm here for the feelings, just there is magic, might change it later though, mild blue bashing, mild gansey bashing, never have i ever chosen a worst title, not too bad but there's that, please don't try to explain the magic, so much dramatic irony, the peggy sue story nobody asked for, though adam doesn't appreciate the irony, weird magic shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-08-23 16:24:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20245807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorypop/pseuds/dorypop
Summary: “Do we have a point? I thought we were doing therapy.”“We were. Last night,” Adam conceded. “Ronan was there. Now he’s not here.”“True. You really are sharp, Parrish.”“Henry. I don’t know how we got here. I don’t remember coming here.”“Perhaps we sleepwalk.”Due to weird magical logic, Adam and Henry have travelled back in time to the day Niall Lynch died. Basically, they try to stop it, no one else knows what they're talking about, Adam misses Ronan and in the end it was all a dream. Kind of.





	1. Chapter 1

Adam knew there was something wrong the moment he opened his eyes. Mainly because Adam distinctly remembered having fallen asleep next to Henry _and_ Ronan and certainly _not_ in whatever this kind of park was.

It was also an odd kind of wrong, not like night horrors, either Ronan’s or his own, gallivanting around nightmare after nightmare. Not like someone had died, or was going to die, or a magic forest needed urgent attention, or he had suddenly remembered he had a test in the morning and the anxiety over whether he was ready or not had woken him.

Actually, it was wrong in a way that made it right. Like this was exactly where he was meant to be. And Adam was really suspicious of that feeling, if only because as he blinked and cleared his mind he realised he really was in a park, or at least laying on some kind of grass. With Henry Cheng fast asleep next to him.

What the hell.

“Henry. Cheng, wake up.”

Henry Cheng did not wake up. Adam kicked him a bit in the leg. Henry groaned.

“It’s not morning yet.”

“Don’t care. We have other problems.”

Henry opened his eyes. He seemed to process that they were laying outside instead of at Monmouth, where they had fallen asleep.

“Did we drink last night?”

Adam did not drink. Not like this, anyway, to wake up somewhere and not remember how he got there. Adam was starting to worry because he was pretty sure he had a shift at the factory and he didn’t have a watch anymore and the sky looked like it was past five. So—

He stood up.

“Where are we?”

Henry was rubbing his eyes.

“I think this is close to where I live? I think we came here one to walk Blue’s dogs. Or the dogs she walks, I mean. Does she have dogs of her own? She has cousins, that I do know for sure, but—.”

“Not the point,” Adam interrupted. He supposed Henry still needed to wake up if he wasn’t calling Blue thinks like _flower_ or _dragonfly_ or whichever the hell piece of nature crossed his mind at the moment, but Adam himself was feeling distinctly panicked and it was becoming harder and harder to swallow it down and _think_ with each second he didn’t understand what was going on.

“Do we have a point? I thought we were doing therapy.”

“We were. Last night,” Adam conceded. “Ronan was there. Now he’s not here.”

“True. You really are sharp, Parrish.”

“Henry. I don’t know how we got here. I don’t remember coming here.”

“Perhaps we sleepwalk,” Henry suggested, shrugging like there was nothing wrong with the world. But there was, there always was, especially because it seemed like there wasn’t. And Adam was trying very, very hard to not think about that other time he had kind of woken up by the side of the road and he didn’t remember shit.

Shit.

At least Henry was here now? He didn’t seem to be of much use, though. He did nothing to calm the explosions that were currently taking place in Adam’s stomach, and which coincidentally made him remember he hadn’t had dinner last night.

“Do you fancy some breakfast? I’m starving,” Henry said then, and for a second Adam was a bit ashamed of having dismissed him like he had. He was his friend now, he made himself think. He was everybody’s friend. Not just another annoying Aglionby jerk with an annoying Aglionby life outside of Aglionby.

“Sorry,” he said, but didn’t elaborate. Henry looked at him and for a second he seemed to read Adam’s mind. But that must have been his imagination, because then Henry finally stood up and made Adam follow him and if he had read Adam’s thoughts he would have certainly left him there.

Adam’s thoughts were not beautiful things to look at. He would know, he spent all his life there.

Sometimes he even wanted to scape.

The park had a path and the path led to a door and the door was closed because apparently the park closed at night but somehow Adam and Henry had got in. Adam jumped the fence first. Henry complained a bit, something about his expensive tennis shoes that were not made to take part in parkour-inspired activities, but Adam was too busy panicking again when the streetlights switched off and it was clear that dawn was here and he was definitely late for work to listen and nod politely. So finally Henry jumped too.

“See, that’s the back of my house. We’ll just grab something and then call Ronan. I see you’re having a bit of separation anxiety.”

“Am not,” Adam said, just because he normally didn’t agree with Henry, but he was absolutely having separation anxiety. He had gone to sleep with Ronan. Now Ronan wasn’t there. And he doubted Ronan was going to pick up the phone.

Breakfast sounded good in any case, so he followed Henry.

He had never been to Lichtfield before, but when Henry tried to give him the tour of the place he declined, not as politely as his mother would have wanted.

Adam had found that he functioned better if he didn’t think about his mother at all, so he added a mild “thank you” at the end of the sentence and he smiled but it came out awkward because he had slipped back into his Henrietta accent and he was teaching himself not to wince every time that happened.

But Henry didn’t seem to mind, because he led him to the kitchen. There was a half-empty jug of coffee in the fridge and a boy on a chair. Adam knew he also went to Aglionby but had never bothered to learn his name.

“Uh. Hi,” he said.

“Adam Parrish?” the boy answered.

“Did you see me come here last night, man?” Henry asked, taking a loaf of somewhat stale bread from a cupboard.

“What do you mean, after I had to carry you to your bed after you cried yourself to sleep over having lost to me at Mario Kart? No, I did not.”

Adam was sure Henry hadn’t played Mario Kart the night before. They had been too busy picking the broken pieces and trying to hold them together and, in Adam’s case, holding his tongue.

“What?” he said, rather eloquently.

“What?” the other boy answered.

Henry shoved the bread into the microwave, but Adam was too confused to think about asking what he was doing.

“So I fell asleep here last night?”

“I guess? Did you wake up somewhere else?” Adam could see the boy was being sarcastic, but he didn’t find the joke funny.

“Nevermind. Have you seen my phone?”

“Ah, yes. It’s charging in the living room. Here, I’ll have some of that toast.”

The toasts didn’t look like toasts at all, but Adam never complained or dismissed food he thought he was allowed to eat and he was also teaching himself to accept food from friends and _Henry was a friend _so he ate his toast while Henry fetched his phone.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Six sharp.”

“Shit.” Adam drank his coffee. He would have to call his boss at the factory.

“That’s not the funny part, though.” Adam looked up from his mug, which was bright purple and said _you can do it_ in golden, shiny letters. “It’s… Uh. It should be Saturday.”

“Yes.”

“It’s not.”

“What do you mean, it’s not.”

“It’s Wednesday.”

“No, it’s not.” Adam could lose minutes or hours or even a day like that awful day of which nobody talked about but he had never lost so much. Or he had, but not in time. He briefly wondered if his toast had been mouldy or something and it was making them believe strange things, just before he remembered that he had eaten much worse bread and nothing had ever happened. And then Henry showed him his phone screen and it said that it was in fact 6:02 in the morning of a Wednesday. Two years earlier. As in when he still didn’t go to Aglionby. As in in the past.

As in _no way_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know this writing troupe/rule/whatever that says you should't start anything with your main character waking up? Well hello there.
> 
> I decided today in a whim I'd write this and I have kind of a plot but don't expect the actual plot to make much sense because I'm using a very convenient type of logic that I save especially for when my feelings get so overwhelming that I feel compulsed to write a fic. So please ignore any possible plot holes and just enjoy the angst and the feels.
> 
> (This doesn't mean I don't accept criticism. I do. I also very much like kudos and comments. And I'm not very active in tumblr but I have one and you can also reach me there: hklnvgl.tumblr.com)
> 
> The usual disclaimers: not betaed, English not my first language, bla bla bla.


	2. Chapter 2

After Adam had washed his faced and tried and failed to vomit his anxiety, in part because he had just had breakfast and his body felt strongly against letting go of food it had already claimed, they tried calling Ronan.

In fact, they had first checked on Henry’s room if there was another Henry sleeping there, as in a Henry– from–the–past , but there wasn’t. So they had concluded that there wasn’t an Adam– from–the–past already at work instead of him, and had double-checked with Henry’s mom, whom he had called, that the date was indeed correct and definitely wrong, and Adam had called his boss.

Then they had called Ronan again and he hadn’t picked up and Adam felt suddenly very aware that if they were in the past, and Henry’s mom didn’t remember anything that had happened _after_ this date they were supposedly living, and neither did Henry’s housemates, that probably meant _Ronan_ didn’t either. And Adam hadn’t met yet Ronan or Gansey or Blue or Noah by this date the first time around. Because Adam didn’t go to Aglionby yet. Because Adam was living in the trailer park with his parents. Who probably didn’t remember that his dad had a restraining order against him. Who would probably be angry if they found out that Adam hadn’t gone to the factory in the morning.

Not that he planned on going anywhere near the trailer park, but he wasn’t stupid and he realised part of the reason his guts were trying to cut him open from the inside was that he was beginning to feel things that he had thought he didn’t need to feel ever again. Like hopeless or small or alone.

Because Ronan wasn’t picking up. And that meant he didn’t think Henry’s number was worthy of being picked up. And that meant that he didn’t remember befriending Henry and that meant he didn’t remember Adam. Like at all.

Hence the vomiting attempts. Or lack thereof, but that wasn’t the point.

What _was_ the point?

How were they going to fix this?

“Parrish, honey-flower, you alive in there?”

“Barely.”

“Good. I’ve called Gansey. It didn’t sound very promising, but he’s agreed to meet us before class.”

“Okay.” Adam flushed the toilet because he didn’t want to admit to himself that he was a failure at inducing himself to vomit.

Adam had gone to bed still wearing his school uniform, because last night he’d gone directly to Monmouth before hell had broken loose. It was rumpled and Adam felt scrappy and wanted to change his underwear, but he didn’t have the kind of relationship with Henry that would allow him to ask to borrow underwear without blushing, and he didn’t feel in the mood to blush, so he didn’t ask.

Henry hadn’t been wearing his uniform but he was now. He drove them to school.

Gansey was waiting for them. Adam had spent the whole journey mulling over what he could say to him that could convince him that they weren’t lying. Or stalkers. Or plain nuts. He hadn’t come up with much, because he had got distracted trying to dissect how he himself had been convinced of the impossible by Gansey when he joined the quest for Glendower. Of course, that may had had to do with the fact that Gansey was Gansey. And Adam was, well, Adam. Who forgot everything he was going to say when he realised that next to Adam was none other that Ronan.

Ronan, who didn’t look like Ronan at all. Ronan, with curly hair. Ronan, not smiling but not scowling either. Ronan, with no black branches hugging his neck. Ronan, whose eyes glossed over Adam without stopping.

Ronan, wearing his Aglionby uniform, before Niall Lynch’s death.

Adam’s brain did the math for him. It was Wednesday. Ronan’s dad had died on a Wednesday. Adam didn’t want to believe it. Adam wanted to say hello to Ronan and hug him and maybe kiss him and let him help to convince his stomach to keep still, so that he could find a solution to this problem.

But that wasn’t going to happen, because Gansey smiled politely and introduced himself and Ronan to Adam. And Ronan nodded, just like that.

Today was the day Ronan’s dad had died.

“I have to say, this was quite unexpected,” Gansey was saying.

Adam’s body betrayed him and he vomited by the tire of Henry’s car. He heard Ronan snort and he felt like crawling under the car and never getting out again.

“Oh, dear, is it something you ate?”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Gansey sounded worried, but he wasn’t. This was his politician voice. This was him falling into polite smiles because he didn’t know what to say. And what do you say, when a person you just met starts throwing up their breakfast _before_ saying _nice to meet you_?

“Ronan,” Adam growled, when he could convince his spine to work properly again. Not that he looked any more dignified, but at least he wasn’t puking anymore.

“Parrish, right?”

No, not right. Nothing was right.

Henry laughed and it sounded silly.

“Look, Parrish and I are in a, let’s say, difficult situation. How amenable are you to believe in… uh… how to put this? Do you believe in alternative timelines?”

Ronan frowned while Gansey opened his mouth and Adam could see they were losing him.

“Ronan,” he tried again. “Is your dad home?”

“What do you know about my dad?” Ronan’s tone was clipped and it hurt Adam to breathe.

“Nothing, really. Never met him,” he trailed off. “But this is important. If he’s here you need to speak with him. Or tell your brother to speak with him. Like today. And warn him—“

“What the hell are you talking about? What is this about my brother? Who the fuck are you?”

Adam was fucking this up enormously. He didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know this Ronan. This Ronan didn’t trust him and he didn’t have time to earn his trust. He didn’t have proof, he didn’t have Gansey to vouch for him.

He wanted to cry. Ronan looked well rested. He didn’t want Ronan to start having nightmares.

He really didn’t know what to say.

“I must admit I was not expecting this,” Gansey said.

“Well, my mom does know your dad. They work together, sometimes,” Henry intervened. Adam didn’t know if he had realised about the date, or if he even knew, but he was suddenly very glad Henry was here. A bell rang to signal the beginning of class, but nobody moved.

“I don’t buy that. If they know each other, she can warn him or whatever shit.”

“Well, yes. We’ll try that too. But—“

“What the fuck do you know about my father?”

Adam swallowed.

He realised this Ronan hadn’t told anyone about his dreaming yet. Adam could barely remember a world in which he wasn’t aware of Ronan’s dreaming. Ronan’s dreaming shaped his understanding of reality. There was this impossible, amazing creature next to him, who could make up entire worlds. This wonderful boy, who somehow thought Adam was worthy of spending time with. If Adam came close enough, he used to think, perhaps he could touch some of this magic. He usually dismissed the thought, though— it came close enough to what everyone else wanted to do with the Greywaren. Use him and force him to dream. It came close enough to becoming a person Adam didn’t want to be, but suspected he secretly had been all along. He just hoped if he kept it hidden enough it wouldn’t contaminate his entire life.

But this Ronan hadn’t told Adam about his dreaming, and this Ronan’s father was still alive and had instructed him not to tell anyone. And Adam didn’t know how he’d react if he mentioned the dreams.

It all felt so damn wrong.

“Look,” he began. The parking lot was almost empty, except for two younger boys who rushed to the main door. “Someone’s very pissed at your dad at the moment. They know what he does, but they don’t know how it works. They think he has a machine or something. So they’re going to come, I think as soon as tonight, to try to get this machine. But there is no machine!”

“So they won’t find anything,” Gansey said. Adam had to remind himself that he didn’t know anything either before snapping.

“They _will_ take something, Ronan.”

“Who the fuck are you?” he sneered. And he was scowling now, furious, but it wasn’t the kind of furious Adam was used to. This Ronan was too innocent to be truly furious. Adam wanted to berate himself for wishing he could see _his_ Ronan now, the Ronan who had had to learn how to _really_ be furious.

Once, he had wanted Gansey to understand how life truly was, before he had grown to cherish his ignorance and work to protect it. Now, he found himself hoping for Ronan’s grief to show up and it broke his heart to see that he could not reach this Ronan to prevent that same grief to explode in his face.

It was so fucked up. _He_ was so fucked up.

“Just tell him what we’ve told you,” Henry said, helpfully, when Adam failed to provide a coherent answer. “He’ll know how to deal with it.”

“So you wanted to talk to me to talk about Ronan’s dad?” Gansey asked. He looked heartbroken.

“Oh, no, no, Dick, my boy! I can’t believe we forgot!” Henry recovered easily. Adam didn’t understand how he could smile like that when Gansey was in front of them but didn’t recognise him. He quickly reevaluated his previous assessment of Henry Cheng. “Actually, what we came here to say is, well. May I present you the very first known time travellers of the world! Of course, I’m talking about Adam Parrish here and beautiful me!”

“Bullshit.” Ronan stormed out, surprisingly heading for the building and not for his car. Adam didn’t actually see his car parked next to the Camaro, two spots to the left to Henry’s. He then remembered the BMW had been Niall’s before. How could he keep forgetting stuff like that?

“Well. It was a pleasure to meet you, Adam Parrish,” Gansey said, and he extended his hand for Adam to shake, and Adam looked at it because it wasn’t transforming into a fist to bump, and when Henry had to nudge for him to start moving he had probably staring at Gansey’s hand for way too long. By now, he and Ronan both had to be thinking he was a creep.

Adam shook Gansey’s hand. He then bumped fists with Henry, who also looked kind of crestfallen if Adam was looking closely, which he always was, and left after Ronan.

Adam and Henry were the only ones left in the parking lot.

“That went well.”

Adam snorted.

“Why did you let me keep talking?”

“You seemed to have it under control.”

“I what? No! Did you miss me puking?”

“It’s a talent you have, I think. Like, people look at you and think ‘what a man’, you know what I mean?”

“What? Henry, no! What are you talking about?”

But Henry only looked at him as if only now his day had started to become weird.

“Well, do you happen to have Niall Lynch’s phone number?” He asked.

“Er— no. He was already dead when I met Ronan_. As you just saw_.”

“Sure, sure.” He started walking towards the door, too.

“Where are you going?” Adam asked.

“I am certainly _not_ going to class when we’re in the middle of this kind of situation. Isn’t it exciting, though?”

“What? No! Ronan’s dad is dying, like, tonight!”

“So it’s today, uh?” They’d reached the office building. Henry opened the door for Adam and Adam entered, feeling as if his legs would stop sustaining him if he stood still for very long.

“I think so, yes.”

“We should hurry, then.”


	3. Chapter 3

Adam found himself mentally building a growing list of things he was carefully not thinking about. Any other day, Adam liked growing stuff and lists in general, but for some reason he was starting to absolutely despise this particular list.

Amongst its awful items were things like the trailer park and the entirety of the previous night and how it may have affected the little adventure Henry and him were having, but also the blueish and ugly bruise he had found on his belly, after a merry little trip to the restroom which was originally conceived to rinse Adam’s mouth.

Adam was trying really hard not to think about that bruise and it was working well until he saw it, because he had been mixing the little pain needles that sort of flashed when he moved with his usual pains of hunger and anxiety. It was working less now that he had realised that this bruise was not something he had brought back from his present so it must have been on his body when he came here. Or something.

Another item on his list was the need he was starting to feel to sit down and either scream or write down everything he remembered about Niall Lynch or his life pre-Aglionby or Ronan’s life pre-Adam. Experience had proven that improvising didn’t really work.

And so his list kept growing, savage like a wild forest, and the mental metaphor made Adam think of Cabeswater and he had to stop walking for a second. He found support on a wall.

“Actually, what I said earlier, I take it back. You seem tougher on the outside,” Henry said. Adam had almost forgotten Henry was there. He added his sudden forgetfulness to the list.

“Fuck off, Cheng, ” he muttered. Henry didn’t pay attention.

“Say. Do you think we being here just on this particular day and year could be, and this is just a hypothesis I’m gonna throw to the wind— could it be, I was saying, that it has something to do with what Gansey said last night?”

“No shit,” Adam scoffed, but then righted himself and sighed. “Yeah, I think so too. Not that I get it, but this is certainly what it was like _before_, so—“

“It’s weird, right? That was weird. They dunno who we are. They don’t care. They just left and that was it.”

Adam hummed.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked.

“We save Niall Lynch, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And we try to figure out how to go back. Because you wanna go back, right?”

“Hell yes”

“So there is that. Step A, Step B. Easy peasy.”

“You do realize that if we manage to somehow save Ronan’s dad, if we go back it will be for nothing, right? Or worse, we save him and we change the future or whatever and then we’re stuck here. Like, forever. Step A is not conducting to Step B, they’re actually separate paths. If that makes sense.”

“It does, it does. I still think we should do it, though.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

“Ready to enter the dangerous depths of Aglionby ‘s deep heart?”

“You mean the office? Why are we here again?”

“Well, they should have ways to contact Ronan’s parents, so. You’re in charge of charming whoever you see first next to a computer, and I’m in charge of hacking said computer.”

“Not gonna work.”

“Wanna change roles? I’m a charmer alright, if I say so myself—“

“Henry, this is serious.”

“So what? You wanna charge in there and tell them that we’re from the future and that we need Ronan’s home number so that we can prevent his dad’s murder? Well if you’re not an optimistic—“

“Well that worked wonders before so obviously not!”

“_Obviously_ my plan is better than no plan!” Henry hissed, before catching himself and rolling his eyes. “Look. I know it must be difficult. I get it. Gansey didn’t know me either. It hurts. But just because this is all kind of weird doesn’t mean that we can’t do something, right? So we just have to try and—“

“Henry,” Adam interrupted. “_Just trying_ won’t take us anywhere! You can’t just try and hope for the best! We need a plan, we need to think and we can’t count on anyone because nobody believes us and we need to do it today!”

Adam wasn’t talking very loud, he was more like shouting while whispering, but he still flinched when the door next to him opened suddenly.

“Is there a reason why you boys are lurking about in here?” Adam’s eyes widened and he felt like puking again. “Hasn’t class started yet?” It was Calla, holding some folders, which for some reason was something Adam had never thought he’d ever seen Calla holding.

“Raven boys,” said someone disdainfully from behind her, and it was Henry’s turn to pale. Adam took half a second more to place the voice.

“Blue?” he breathed, and the wall didn’t want to hold him anymore.

Calla’s wide reflexes caught him before he hit the floor. And then she released him violently, as if he’d burned her.

“Perhaps you should come inside,” she said.

Adam needed a second to recover before he was ready to stand again. Before crossing the door, he glanced at Henry, who hadn’t moved yet. He looked at Blue as if he’d seen a ghost, which wasn’t exactly accurate but close enough for Adam to gently take him by the elbow and carry him inside.

“What? Aren’t you gonna punish them or something? They’re clearly skipping class. They’re even wearing their uniforms!” Blue was slouched over the visitor chair opposite Calla’s desk, biting the back end of a pencil. The room was barely big to hold them four.

“He doesn’t go here,” Calla said, pointing at Adam, and he nodded.

“Shouldn’t _you_ be in class?” Henry asked, meekly.

She snorted.

“None of your business”, she said, at the same time that Calla answered. “She’s suspended.”

“Nice,” Adam said, when the silence stretched for too long.

“Why are you here?” Calla asked.

“Don’t know.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Not sure.”

“Ronan’s dad phone number,” Henry interjected, perhaps because he wasn’t as used as Adam to deal with psychics. Although perhaps Adam’s abilities only worked with Persephone, because Calla nodded and typed something and wrote the number down on a sticky note she then gave to Henry.

“Will it work?” Adam asked. Calla put some of her hair behind her ear.

“Perhaps you should come by later for a reading. You know the way, I assume.”

“Oh, no! Are you actually _inviting_ them? To our home?”

Calla eyed Blue soundly. It felt like being in the eye of a hurricane.

“Yes,” Calla simply answered, and Blue made a face.

“Whatever. It’s your pest, though. Don’t ask me to entertain them.”

“That won’t be necessary, no.” She was still talking to Blue, but it sounded like she was dismissing the boys.

“Bye, Janey-Jane!” Henry managed, but Blue didn’t look up from her notebook.


	4. Chapter 4

Adam didn’t know what to think about Niall Lynch.

He’d never met the man, never spoken to him. It was before his time, so he was content to see him through the eyes of the others. He knew Ronan’s version of Niall, and Declan’s version of Niall, and Henry’s mom version of Niall, and the Grey Man’s version of Niall. He knew Aurora’s version too, but didn’t trust it that much. He wondered what Gansey’s version was like, but had never asked. He once heard Matthew say Niall had liked swimming.

“You dated Blue before, didn’t you?” Henry’s question didn’t really match his dialing Niall’s number.

“Uh?”

“Gansey told me once. He said—“

Now Henry had stopped typing completely. Adam sighed and ruffled his hair, perhaps looking there for some bits of patience. He didn’t find any.

“What was it? Can’t be worse than yesterday.”

“I probably shouldn’t say.”

“Then don’t.” Adam was ready to move on. Apparently that wasn’t Henry’s case.

“I mean— what if whatever caused this, whatever we triggered last night— What if it gets triggered again?”

“Why, by talking about Gansey?”

“Well, if I didn’t trigger anything and you didn’t trigger anything then who’s flying the plane, if you know what I mean!”

“What? Gansey doesn’t remember us, Henry. It doesn’t matter what he said before— or, like, in the future, because this Gansey doesn’t know us.”

“Was it you who broke up with Blue?”

Adam blinked. And he blinked again, and he wondered if he was hearing right, and then he felt sick again because it had taken him this long to realise that he was definitely hearing right because his two ears seemed to be working.

“What do _you_ care?” He asked, but it sounded like a whine.

“Blue didn’t like me at first. I think she kinda hated me?”

“Henry. Blue’s not gonna break up with you.”

“Well, no, because she doesn’t know me!”

Adam tried to rewind to figure out when this conversation had got so out of hand, but his brain wasn’t working properly.

“Look. Look. We’re gonna go back. I don’t know how, but we’re gonna get our lives back. And Gansey and Blue and Ronan will remember us and—“ He paused.

Henry was apprehensively clutching his phone.

“What is it?”

“We should go to Monmouth.”

“After we call Mr. Lynch? Aren’t we getting a bit out of track?”

“I’m getting out of track? Doesn’t matter. No, don’t call yet. He won’t believe us.”

“Or he might. Here— I’ll call. You drive to Monmouth. Everyone’s happy.”

Adam very much wanted to ask Henry about his definition of happiness, but he didn’t really have one of his one he could use as counterargument and he was feeling nausea climbing from his stomach, so he took Henry’s keys while he dialled.

The call was picked up when they were leaving Aglionby. Henry started explaining his connection to Seondeok and Ronan. He was in the middle of his second sentence and then he was suddenly looking at the black screen of his phone.

“He hung up,” he muttered. Adam could still see Aglionby from the rear-view mirror.

Being right didn’t ease the trembling of his legs.

“What did he say?”

“Not much. Just that we should leave things to adults who know what they’re talking about.”

“Yeah. Like that worked before.”

“So. Why Monmouth?”

“Noah might be there.”

“Isn’t Noah— Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They drove in silence. When Adam parked the car, in a parking lot empty of orange Camaros and black BMWs, he took a deep breath.

Noah suddenly appeared in the back seat when Henry was about to open the door.

“Hey, hey!”

“Woah!”

Adam’s hand longed to scramble like Henry’s, looking for something to hold while their brains tried to process the impossibility that was Noah being where a second before he was not. He refrained from reacting in more than a weak smile that Noah reciprocated when he turned around.

“Noah, hey.”

“I’ve missed you guys,” Noah said. Adam wanted to cry. He remembered a broken car and funeral held too late and he rested for a second in the knowledge that he was wanted, that Noah knew who he was, that he wasn’t kicking them out of the parking lot.

“Likewise,” he said, when he could speak again. “Hey, Noah, this is Henry.”

“I know!” Noah shook Henry’s extended hand.

“You’re the first ghost I get to meet!”

“I’m the first ghost I got to meet too! Isn’t that a great coincidence, Adam?”

Adam laughed for the first time since he had woken up.

“You’re my first ghost too.”

“And you’re my first time travellers. So how’s the future? Robots conquered us yet?”

“If you know us from there, haven’t you seen it yourself?” Adam reasoned.

“Dunno. It’s weird. Don’t remember any robots, though.” Noah seemed to deflate and Adam thought he could see the seat’s fabric through him.

“Listen. D’you know about Ronan’s dad?”

“Hmm— vaguely. He does have a dad, that I know. We’re not best friends yet. He comes around here, but not very often. Is his dad cool?”

“He just hung us up on the phone,” Henry said.

“That’s rude.”

“The thing is— he’s gonna be killed. Tonight, actually. And we’ve tried talking to him and talking to Ronan, but they don’t believe us. Any ideas?”

Noah’s eyes rounded while he seemed lost in thought.

“I know!”, he cried, after a few minutes.

“Yes?”

“We should totally have a picnic.”

Henry glanced briefly at Adam before looking back to Noah.

“No offense, but that will help how, exactly?”

“Adam’s always hungry. And you seem like a picnic kind of guy!” Noah beamed. “Oh!” He suddenly looked outside the window and smiled back at Adam before opening the door. He was swinging it back closed just as Gansey’s Camaro rounded the corner.

“Shit.” That was Henry. Adam agreed.


	5. Chapter 5

“What the hell are you fuckers doing here?” Ronan shouted through the open window. He banged the door open seconds before Gansey had brought the car to a stop. “What do you want?”

“Oh, Ronan, isn’t it lovely? Adam and Henry have come to visit!” Noah was actually bouncing on his feet.

“Do you know these fuckers?”

Noah hummed.

“What have you done to Noah? Have you drugged him or some shit?” Ronan snarled. Adam perhaps would have been cowered by his venom had he not been the aim of a much angrier and more bitter Ronan. Had he not seen Ronan smile, carefree and happy, as he fell asleep next to him.

“Parrish! He thinks we’re drug dealers!” Henry got out of the car too.

Adam couldn’t seem to leave the faux protection the wheel gave him.

He wasn’t afraid of Ronan, but it hurt Adam to see Ronan mad at him. It hurt too much. When they fought and they were both angry and said mean things it hurt too, but by the time they made amends both of them were at fault and they cared too much to let it fester for long. And before that, they fought so much that it didn’t really matter. Ronan was angry and tired of it. Adam was angry but wasn’t allowed to be. Fighting was their way of finding oxygen to keep on living.

But this Ronan was afraid of Adam, because he didn’t know him and Adam was sprouting nonsense and approaching his friends. Adam had power because he knew Ronan’s secrets.

Adam bit down a sob. He could get out of the car and shove some truths into Ronan’s ears and then maybe he’d listen. Just— which kind of truths would make him earn his trust and which would push him away?

He closed his eyes for a second. How had he become friends with Ronan the first time around?

He had befriended Gansey. He had helped with his car and then he had been invited to Monmouth, and he had accepted because the alternative was to wait out the evening trying to get some homework done while his father was distracted by a baseball match, before he demanded the lights to be shut down to save power. And he had enjoyed himself, and then biked home and woken up before sunrise to get to work, and when he was biking to school just early enough so that he could maybe finish his homework before class started Gansey had given him a lift half of the way. And suddenly he was hunting a sleeping Welsh king.

But how had he and Ronan become friends? He’d been there that first evening with Gansey. Noah had, too, now that he thought about it. But he had insulted Adam a bit and then shut himself up in his bedroom. He’d been there when Adam had joined Gansey for lunch, and when they’d gone to Nino’s two or three nights a week, and when they studied topographic maps and in half Adam’s classes. So when had they stopped being acquaintances to become friends?

Adam complimented Ronan’s car once. He got a “don’t you wish you could afford one?” as an answer, and he had stopped complimenting anything Ronan owned.

Ronan offered to gift Adam some painkillers once. He got a “you’ll need them more when you look at yourself in the mirror” as an answer. Ronan hadn’t stopped trying to shower Adam with medicines and mildly conceited offers to teach him to box.

Maybe that was it? He had to keep trying, like Ronan had back then?

He got out of the car. The conversation had moved a bit towards the stairs leading to the entrance, but Henry seemed to be losing either way.

“Just ask me something. Anything. And I’ll tell you so you can believe that we come from the future!”

“What colour is my piss?”

“Ronan!” Adam snorted at Gansey’s shock. After everything, Ronan wasn’t very different now and then. Ronan was just Ronan.

He didn’t seem very happy to see Adam approaching, though.

“We shouldn’t actually tell you anything,” he said. “If we reveal too much and you change how you acted the first time around, you’ll be changing your future, which is our present, and we’ll be stuck here.”

“That’s not really how it works,” Noah intervened, but then didn’t elaborate when everyone turned to look at him.

“And it doesn’t matter, because we’re trying to _change_ things, remember, Adam dear? In our timeline, Ronan’s dad died tonight. We’re just trying to stop it! We’re not the bad guys, guys!”

“Did you kill my dad? Is that why you’re so desperately trying to stop it?” Ronan’s hands were fisted by his sides. Adam wanted to reach out to him and slowly open his fingers and make him relax.

“No,” he said softly. “I know who did it, though. I know the guy who actually did it and the guy who send the first one to do it. I can tell you who they are and why they did it and how we stopped them from killing you too. If you’d like.”

“What? Parrish, you didn’t say someone was trying to kill Ronan, too!” Gansey gasped.

“Because they’re not, yet. They’re only looking for this— _thing._ They believe your dad has it. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“No! I don’t know shit. I don’t have to listen to you.” He turned around and started walking, only to come back after two steps. “You stay here with your new best friend Noah the creep. Don’t you dare to follow me, understood?” His eyes were piercing Adam’s and leaving a bloody trail. Adam nodded, slowly.

“Ronan? Where are you going? I thought you said you weren’t feeling well—“

“St. Agnes,” Ronan answered before storming out, loosening his tie as he walked until he could take it out through the head. He then put it in his jacket’s pocket and Adam couldn’t stop thinking what a pain it would be to iron it later. Not that Ronan ironed his clothes— Gansey did it for him. Or Aurora, probably, before. But Aurora wouldn’t get the chance to iron anything, because she was going to fall asleep in two days’ time, and—

“Adam!” Noah tried to catch him before he hit the floor, but he wasn’t corporeal enough. Before blacking out, Adam made a mental note to wake the ley line at his earliest convenience.


	6. Chapter 6

For the second time in what was turning to be a very long morning, Adam woke up completely lost and disoriented. He blinked a little and stretched a little more and slowly came aware that he was lying on Noah’s bed.

He’d only ever slept on Noah’s bed on those nightmarish nights just before and after making his deal with Cabeswater and it brought back several painful memories such as how he was feeling after he became homeless. So he shook his head and while he managed to make his headache a bit more prominent it also helped to wake him up.

He felt unwashed and wrinkled as his uniform, but he tumbled through the gloomy, empty room towards the door.

Gansey stood up the moment he saw him appear.

“Parrish. How are you feeling? Do you want anything? Coffee? Orange juice?”

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” Adam rasped.

“Ronan needed a ride,” he answered.

Adam wondered how many hours ago that had been. He didn’t remember going to sleep in Noah’s bedroom, so he figured Gansey or Henry had to have carried him upstairs. He didn’t like the thought so he didn’t dwell on it.

“I’ll have some juice, please.”

Gansey motioned for Adam to go sit on his bed, next to Henry and Noah. Henry beamed at him and was about to hug him before Adam shoved him away. He felt too itchy to allow human contact. He knew the only touch he’d have tolerated was Ronan’s and Ronan wasn’t about to touch him if not to punch him or something.

He clutched his belly, where the bruise was acting up a bit.

“Dicky-Dick’s going to come with us later to Fox Way. He says he wants to meet the witches, too,” Henry announced.

“Great.”

“Do you mind?”

Adam didn’t, because he was too busy trying not to berate himself too hard for having fallen asleep when they were in fact on a very tight schedule. His defendant arguments were mainly captained by the fact that he hadn’t fallen asleep as much as passed out. He was losing anyway, because the trial was against himself and he was a much better prosecutor than he was at pardoning himself.

Gansey gave him a glass full of orange juice while eyeing him with something like worry.

“Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to—“

“Don’t mention it. Henry’s convinced me you two come from the future. I believe you now, therefore I believe we’re friends.”

Adam drank in the hope it’d ease the lump on his throat. It didn’t, but it gave him something to do while trying to avoid Gansey’s earnest stare.

“Cool,” he muttered. “Do you--? Do you believe us then, about Ronan’s dad too?”

“I’m—still trying to wrap my head around it, but I guess so, yes. It’ll be a bit of a challenge to make Ronan believe it, too, but I think we could manage. I’ve been trying to contact Niall, actually, but neither he nor Ronan are picking the phone.”

“We should try Declan, then.”

“Declan?” Gansey looked horrified. Adam nodded, finished his juice and stood up. “Declan Lynch? But— I don’t have his number.”

“You don’t?” Now it was Adam’s turn to be surprised. Gansey was on better terms with Declan than Adam himself, he’d always been. Even after everything that had happened, even after Adam had started dating Ronan, he could probably count the conversations he’d had with Declan with his fingers. It was still Gansey Declan called when he couldn’t reach Ronan, even though these days it was statistically more probable that Ronan would be at St. Agnes with Adam or at the Barns with Opal than at Monmouth. Though that was probably because Adam still didn’t own a phone and he tended to side with Ronan anyway, so it wasn’t very profitable for Declan to try to approach him first.

Gansey looked kind of frightened of the idea of talking to Declan Lynch. Adam would’ve found it very funny had he not known said Declan Lynch was to become an orphan in a matter of hours if they didn’t do anything.

“So we have three options-- either we try with Declan—tell him at Aglionby or something, or we go to Fox Way and try to get an explanation or a solution out of the psychics.”

“And the third one?”

“We go straight to the Barns hoping to catch Aurora or Ronan’s dad and hope for the best.”

“I say we try number two first.” Gansey unsurprisingly started heading for the door, sure that everyone else would follow.

“I think we should go with Declan,” Adam said.

“How does the saying go? Three’s the charm or something?” Henry said.

“Third time,” Noah corrected. “I miss Blue.”

And so they went to Fox Way, only to have Noah disappear as they were ringing the bell, which Gansey didn’t notice because he was too excited asking about their quest for Glendower to Henry, who seemed set on not telling him the straight truth.

“Ah. It’s you.” Blue answered the door. She then eyed them with frowned lips and clicked her tongue. “And you brought another one. What a lovely day I’m having.” She nonetheless let then pass. “Calla and Persephone are waiting in the reading room.”

Adam led the way.

He wasn’t really ready to see Persephone again, but at the same time he wanted to cherish every single second he could spend with the one person he could say had never judged him for how he looked or where he came from.

He couldn’t help but hold his breath when he entered the room and she pierced him with those eyes of her.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Calla nodding. Henry then introduced them to Gansey.

Adam sat in front of Persephone and only then he realized that Blue had after all followed them and was sitting there too.

“Pick a card.” Persephone handed Adam her deck, and Adam couldn’t hold back a tear at the thought that those same cards were the same ones he had held so many times. With these cards he had spoken to Cabeswater. These cards had guided him and endangered him and talked to him. They were the last priceless present Persephone had gifted him. And they were back at her hand, where they belonged.

Adam caressed two, three cards, waiting for something.

He heard Blue scoff and Henry scold her and Gansey gasp. He heard the door creak open and he knew it was Maura without looking. He felt another tear fall before he picked a card.

He didn’t look at it. He didn’t need to.

“Something’s happening today,” Maura said.

“Nothing that hasn’t happened before,” Calla nodded again.

“It will happen again,” Persephone whispered.

“This is so cool,” Henry stated.

Adam was playing with his card, still pressed against the table. He looked at Maura, who seemed to be waiting for him to add something.

“Are you free tonight?” he asked instead.

“She’s not,” Blue answered.

Gansey looked to be itching to pick a card himself, too, or at least to uncover Adam’s. Adam himself wouldn’t have minded, but they were Persephone’s cards so he put it back carefully in the middle of the deck.

“I’ve been looking for an excuse to borrow Orla’s red dress,” Maura said.


	7. Chapter 7

Persephone gave them some pie before they left for the Barns. Blue insisted she wanted to come with, even though she absolutely despised a plan that consisted mainly on her mother distracting a hit man by putting on a nice dress. Gansey insisted he wanted to come too, he said that because it was exciting to be living an adventure with new friends and that because he was of course worried about Ronan, but it was pretty obvious for Adam that he wanted to seize any opportunity he could get to talk to Blue.

So Adam, Henry, Blue, Gansey and Maura piled into Henry’s car and Henry gave the keys once more to Adam.

“You wouldn’t make a wrong turn,” he said, at Adam’s raised eyebrow. “Besides, I have it on good authority that you’re a wonderful mechanic.”

“And what does that have to do with anything I wonder,” Adam sighed, but he started the car.

Maura was applying lipstick.

“So we’re really off to see a hit man,” Blue said.

Henry hummed, but Blue ignored him.

“So we are,” Gansey said.

“And your plan is to, what, throw yourself at him?” she asked her mother. “Pretend you fell onto him or something?”

“Blue, honey, we’re not on a movie.” Maura smiled at her reflection on a small mirror.

“Wouldn’t have guessed. These two keep saying we’re in Back To The Future.” She motioned towards the front seats, where Adam and Henry were. “Part four.”

“I didn’t know they made four parts,” Gansey said.

“They didn’t.”

Gansey seemed to think this was the funniest joke anybody had ever told. Adam decided to block them and fix his attention on the road.

“Henry,” he said after a few minutes. “Call Declan.” He told him the number. Henry reluctantly dialed.

In the back seat, the bickering persisted. Blue was accusing both her mother and Gansey of being nothing but filthy conservative monsters. Gansey was trying to defend himself while Maura looked out of the window, and Adam caught how Henry looked at them, longingly, in the rear view mirror.

Declan picked up.

“Good day. I’m Henry Cheng, you probably aren’t aware but I go to Aglionby. I’m in the same year as your brother’s—“ At least Declan was letting Henry explain. Not that Adam had expected anything different, but he kind of missed the timeline in which Declan knew who they were.

“So?” he asked Henry when he finally hung up.

“Could’ve been worse. He didn’t exactly believe me, but he knows about my mom, so he said he’s on his way to the Barns.”

“When is Mr. Grey coming here?” Maura asked.

Henry looked at Adam. They were nearing the intersection signaling for Singer Falls.

“I’m not really sure. Ronan’s never—I’ve never asked him the details. I know he found him in the morning, though.”

“Were you and Ronan good friends?” Gansey asked, candidly. Adam struggled to keep his hands firm on the wheel.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Were you and I good friends?” Gansey insisted.

Adam swallowed.

“Yes,” he said, but it sounded shallower.

“Oh, Adam,” Henry began, but Adam’s furious glance shut him up before he could elaborate.

“We’re getting there,” he said after a few minutes of silence.

“This—wasn’t what I was expecting,” Blue admitted, taking in the stunning landscape. Adam could share the feeling, but he was too anxious to really acknowledge how much like coming home it felt to be parking in this gravel, which unless they succeeded would be soon dyed in Niall’s blood.

“Perhaps you should start having realistic expectations so that the world can dream of meeting them,” Adam muttered, too bitter to bother controlling his temper. He turned off the engine and pulled the keys off. “Let’s go,” he said, throwing them into Henry’s lap.

“Wait a minute. Just what right do you think you have to speak to me like that?” Blue was saying, but Adam ignored her.

He briskly walked to the front door and rang the bell. He purposely didn’t look at the plum trees or the other barns or the fields. He didn’t want to think about the animals that Ronan had so desperately tried to awaken, which should now be swarming about.

Aurora Lynch opened the door just as he was about to ring again.

This time he couldn’t repress a sob when he remembered the last time he had seen her, once upon a dream.

“Oh, dear. Are you alright?” she asked, already motioning him to come inside.

Before he could refuse, though, her husband appeared. He demanded to know what was going on and Adam was vaguely aware that Maura started explaining while he was busy having what seemed to be his thirtieth panic attack of the day.

He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. He was failing miserably at the easy task of keeping this man alive and making Ronan happy. Henry was counting on him and he was failing him too.

Ronan hated and feared him. Gansey only cared at the idea of being friends with him. Blue was childishly expecting to start a fight with him. Aurora was sweetly guiding him inside, despite Niall’s protests when he realized they were the same people who had been alarmingly approaching his family since the morning.

“This boy needs to sit down for a second and we have plenty of chairs,” she said suddenly, pushing Adam through the kitchen towards one of the stools. But that only made it worse, because she was being too kind and because Adam had sat on this same particular stool just the previous Monday, when Ronan had made him dinner after his shift at Boyd’s and he had fallen asleep on the couch with Ronan’s hands on his hair and Opal drooling on the floor.

And suddenly she was shushing him and putting a glass of water on his hands and talking to him, using the same gentle voice Ronan employed when he groomed Chainsaw’s feathers, and Adam cried even harder because he missed Chainsaw _so fucking much_.

“He hates me and we can’t convince anyone and they’re coming and it’s _tonight_—“ Adam knew he was babbling and wasn’t probably making much sense but he couldn’t just take Aurora’s kindness for free—he had to give something back, because if he didn’t she’d just fall asleep and then she’d be killed by a demon and it was all Adam’s fault because he hadn’t been able to protect Cabeswater and it everything was so very wrong.

“You’re hurting yourself,” Aurora kept saying, but Adam didn’t know what she meant. “You need to open your mouth and breathe, honey.”

The last person who had ever called Adam _honey_ was his primary school nurse, the few times he had surrendered and gone to her to ask for a painkiller. Adam suspected she suspected what was going on with his home life. She never said a thing, not to him nor to anyone else, and Adam didn’t know if he resented her or was grateful for it. He didn’t think he could have borne to be confronted about it when he was nine. He’d probably have spilt everything had someone approached him as kindly as Aurora was looking at him right then. He didn’t know if that was a good thing, that nobody had cared enough, that it had hardened him enough to push through and make him go to Aglionby.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried like this. He hadn’t cried when Gansey had died, or when Persephone had died, or when he had found out Noah had died. He hadn’t cried when he’d seen Ronan’s dream self die in front of his eyes. He hadn’t cried when he had taken his father to court.

He had probably cried in his sleep the very first days he’d gone to Aglionby, out of exhaustion and relief and disappointment. He didn’t remember clearly, though, because he tried very hard to block and forget these kind of dreams so that he could wake up in perfect shape and perform accordingly.

But he was tired of trying hard.

Aurora kept walking him through the motions of proper breathing while sobbing and Adam wanted to laugh at himself because he wasn’t even able to do the two most basic things babies get right seconds after birth.

He was utterly embarrassed because these were _Ronan’s parents_ who were watching him make a mess of himself and cry and be noisy and annoying and behave like a toddler. Ronan’s parents and Blue and Gansey and Henry.

He cared too much, but he felt he didn’t care enough.

“Kid, this is not normal,” Niall then said, and what Aurora’s compassion hadn’t managed her husband accomplished with such simple words.

“Sorry,” he managed, furiously wiping his tears away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break down in your kitchen,” his voice sounded pathetic, but he felt he could breathe at least. “We were coming to warn you, not to—“

“We’ll talk about this warning of yours extensively in a minute, but— kid, how much shit are you in? You need— I don’t even know where to start.”

Adam still didn’t know what to think about Niall Lynch, but he’d already managed to make the poorest possible first impression on a person ever. Counting how he’d puked his insides out just this morning after meeting Gansey and Ronan.

“You can start by not blaming him for things he cannot control,” Aurora said.

“What?”

“Everyone cries, you know. You should try it more often. And open your mouth while you’re at it, too. I thought you were going to hurt your ribs.” Aurora passed him the untouched glass of water.

Adam didn’t know what to do with himself, so he drank a bit.

“So— Sorry to interrupt, but we’re on a bit of a hurry,” Henry intervened. “As Maura has already told you—“

“There’s no need to repeat yourselves,” Niall said.

“We really come from the future,” Adam said then. “I know Ronan.” He ignored how Niall’s expression closed off because he felt he needed to say this. “I— didn’t meet him until after, that’s why you’ve never heard of me, but it was pretty awful for him. He moved with Gansey and started drinking and racing and he— He had terrible nightmares.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But I _do_ know. I know, because he told me, he told _us_, and it costed him so very much to feel like he had your permission to tell. I know about Matthew and I know about the Greywaren and about the Laumoniers, and I helped scare Greenmantle away after he’d become Ronan’s Latin teacher at Aglionby.”

“Greenmantle can’t have come here, that’s—“

“And what _you_ don’t know is that Ronan found your body and it was so bad that he wanted to die, _hence_ the drinking and the racing and the conjuring clawed monsters in his sleep.”

“You don’t—“

Adam stood up and banged the empty glass on the table.

“I’m not making it up! What else do you want me to tell you? The cows fell asleep and Ronan made a new will _and_ both I and the ley line don’t like one bit that you were draining the ley line and stealing from it!”

Niall looked furious and was surely about to lash out when Aurora stood up between them.

“That is quite enough.” She eyed them both fiercely and Adam deflated and sat back on his stool.

“Sorry,” he repeated. “It’s just— it’s tonight.”

Someone opened the front door with their keys. A few seconds later, Declan appeared in the kitchen.

“Dad,” he said.

“We’ll talk in the study.” Aurora nodded towards her son. “Dec, sweetheart, text Matthew to keep Ronan away from here until dinner time.” She then turned towards Adam. “If you don’t have anything else to fix until now, you can wait for them here and explain all of this to Ronan.”

“Uh— they’ve already tried that, Aurora,” Gansey intervened. “It didn’t go as planned.”

“Then you should perhaps use this time to think about a better method.”

She followed her husband and son out of the kitchen, throwing a warning glance towards Maura, as the only adult in the group. Blue’s mom waved her away, but Aurora paused before leaving completely.

She turned back and spoke to Adam.

“Do you have a place to stay, honey?”

Adam didn’t, but he didn’t want to say, and he felt too drained to lie to her, so he kept silent.

“He does,” Henry said.

Aurora left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer #1: Yes, those were 2k words of Adam crying. No, I regret nothing.
> 
> Fun Fact #1: Aurora wasn't initially going to be in this fic. Her lines asking Adam whether he was homeless were originally going to belong to Persephone.
> 
> Unpopular Opinion #1: I kind of like Persephone as a character and I inherently enjoy reading about anyone being kind to Adam, but I think I'd dislike her as a person. She has this Luna Lovegood vibe of being too ethereal to ever hold a sensible conversation with you and I'm a sensible conversations kind of person. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Fun Fact #2: Aurora comforting Adam is one of my guilty pleasure and it may or may not feature another fic I'm kind of deciding if I'll write after this one.
> 
> Fun Fact #3: Declan was going to have more personality on this one. Aurora surpassed him too on that.
> 
> Fun Fact #4: Only got three more chapters left. They will be heavy on Ronan and /feelings/.
> 
> Fun Fact #5: I looove kudos and comments. ♥


	8. Chapter 8

Declan must have sent that text, because Ronan and Matthew only came back after Maura had gone off with Niall and his oldest son to both seduce the Gray Man and convince him to change jobs.

Adam had accepted a portion of a stew Aurora produced from the fridge and was eating it when Ronan and Matthew entered.

He felt instantly drained and his stomach revolted at the prospect of being filled by such exquisite food when he’d done nothing but cause pain to Ronan all day long.

Because Ronan wasn’t voicing his discomfort at having him eating dinner at his table, but it was obvious in how he looked at him while Gansey explained what was going on and Matthew introduced himself to Henry and Blue.

Aurora must have noticed, because she put herself between Ronan and Adam and told her son to fix a plate for him and his brother.

“You’ll want to eat your whole portion,” she said then, eyeing Adam as she sat back on her stool.

Adam wanted to obey, but he was starting to feel overwhelmed again.

“What’s your deal?” Ronan asked. He sat next to Adam and his stew actually sloshed a little when he put his plate on the table with too much force.

“I—“ Adam was at loss for words. There was a million things he wanted to say to Ronan, but this Ronan was neither willing to listen not ready to do so. He wanted to scratch himself raw until he forgot what he’d had and not valued enough and now was lost for him. “I’m sorry,” he finally said, almost a whisper.

“What for?” Ronan spoke with his mouth full. Aurora scolded him for it.

“For not knowing what to say to make it better,” Adam answered truthfully.

“Sometimes,” Aurora intervened, “you can’t make it better.”

“Then— what’s the point then?” Adam asked.

“Yeah. What’s the point of you being here if you can’t make it fucking better?” Ronan asked, and Adam didn’t know if he was being mocked or not. He _hated_ not to know.

“That was Gansey’s fault, actually.” Henry said, from across the table, pointing at Gansey with his spoon.

Gansey looked properly appalled.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, not you-Gansey,” Henry unhelpfully clarified. “Future-Gansey, that is. He made Ronan cry. Not you-Ronan, either. Future-Ronan.”

“Yeah, thanks, we get it,” Ronan kept eating and refused to look at Gansey.

Matthew seemed to be having the time of his life.

“Wait— so how does that work? Like are there two of you here right now? And how’re you planning of going back? Wait! When you go back— what’s gonna happen with present-you? Is there a current version of you _right now_ in the future?”

Aurora told him to be careful with his spoon movements when he spoke, so that he wouldn’t drench Blue in stew.

“No, because I don’t remember going to the future when I was young,” Adam said.

“But how did I make Ronan cry? I’m terribly sorry, Ronan.”

“You just said something. It’s no big deal,” Adam said. And it was the truth, if you compared Gansey being Gansey with the rest of Adam’s day.

“Not fair! You have to tell us now!” Blue said. Matthew cheered her.

Ronan glared to everyone but his mom.

Adam shrank on his stool when Henry looked at him as if asking for permission. He didn’t say anything, but Henry nodded.

“Gansey-boy, we love you, but you have the tact of a killer whale. You said, textually, that the Ronan-from-before, that is, _this_ Ronan, would always be happier and a better version of himself than _our_ Ronan. And then you strongly implied that you thought Ronan dating Adam was a terrible idea and that past-Ronan wouldn’t have approved either.”

Matthew was the one to break the minute of uncomfortable silence that Adam spent looking at his plate.

“You guys were dating? Oh my god! Congratulations, Ronan!”

Ronan didn’t say anything. Adam dared look at him only to discover he was looking at Gansey instead. He swallowed the bolt of jealousy because he had no right to complain Ronan didn’t want to look at him when he had spent a cowardly minute looking at his uneaten food.

“Talk about plot twists,” Blue said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Ronan said, but didn’t stop looking at Gansey.

“Honey, language,” Aurora admonished, and that was the full extent of her acknowledgment of being part of the conversation. Adam released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding— he didn’t think he could’ve borne to disappoint her too, on top of everything else.

Ronan seemed to be waiting for Gansey to say something, but he didn’t. He gaped and looked at Henry and awkwardly drank from his glass of water, but he didn’t defend himself by saying whatever Future-Gansey had done it wasn’t really his fault. Or at least that’s what Adam would have said.

Ronan got tired of waiting.

“Fuck this,” he said, and stood up.

Adam’s insides twisted.

“Wait!” he cried, and without thinking he reached to grab Ronan’s wrist. Ronan didn’t let him touch him, though.

“What the hell do you want now? Even if this is true— it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know you. I don’t give a shit about you. Got it?”

Adam did get it. He wasn’t expecting Ronan to suddenly kiss him or hold him or tell him everything was going to be alright. He wished for it, but he knew it wasn’t happening.

He nodded.

“If I promise— if I swear I won’t try anything and I don’t mean any harm to you, will you come to a place with me?” he asked, feeling a sudden inspiration.

Ronan hesitated.

“I’ll hold the fort here!” Henry said. Ronan glared at him.

But he wasn’t glaring when his eyes travelled back to Adam, so he insisted.

“It’s not dangerous. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. It’s not far and you can drive and— please.”

Ronan nodded, slowly.

“Mom. If I’m not back tonight, call the police and tell them I’ve been kidnapped by these suspicious people.”

Aurora eyed Adam’s unfinished plate before answering.

“I’ll keep this on the fridge for when you come back,” she said.

Adam took Ronan to Cabeswater.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve just noticed there’s a plothole concerning Adam’s clothes that neither you nor I will be mentioning from now on. Please move forward with your lives.


	9. Chapter 9

Cabeswater was just exactly as Adam remembered it, and he had to take a minute to take that in so that he could guide Ronan through it.

“Something wrong?” Ronan seemed wary. Adam shook his head.

“This is gonna sound crazy.”

“And you worry about that _just_ _now_.”

“I made a deal with this forest.”

Ronan blinked.

“Okay, you were right. You sound crazy.”

“It’s not a normal forest. It’s a magic forest. It’s— It’s the forest you go to when you dream.”

Adam expected Ronan to get mad, to shout at him, to leave him stranded there even. He certainly didn’t expect him to nod, sit down against a tree and take a breath.

“Okay. You said you were going to answer my questions. How do you know about my dreams?”

“You told me.”

“Just like that.”

“Well, no. It took you a while. You knew all my secrets by then, too. You—“ Adam hesitated, not knowing how much to tell. But then he decided that, if Ronan was willing to listen, he’d have to make it count. So he went all for it. “You dreamed a baby raven. You said you’d found her. Declan wanted you to live at the dorms but you lived with Gansey instead. I think you were afraid of sleeping close to Gansey because you had nightmares all the time and you could dream of wasps. So you went to St. Agnes and you dreamt a raven there.”

“And then I told you I had dreamt the fucking raven?”

“No. We found the man who’d k—“ He bit his lip. And then he went on. “We found the man who’d killed Noah, and I let him die.”

“Noah? Noah died too? Not just my dad?”

“Noah is already dead.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

Ronan kept looking at him as if waiting for the gag. It didn’t come and Adam had to close his eyes because it wasn’t fair to Ronan that he was taking advantage of Ronan looking at him to inflate his ego.

“Okay. I’ll ask about that later. Keep going,” he said, after a while.

Adam opened his eyes and he looked at the sky through the tree leaves.

“I stopped that man from killing Gansey by making a deal with this forest. It kind of possessed me and by the end it wasn’t very nice, but it was the very first being I’ve loved in my entire life.” He waited for Ronan’s barbed comment, but it didn’t come. He supposed it was because he was still processing the news about Noah.

“And then I told you about my dreaming.”

“And then you helped me make the most difficult decision of my life, and you told _us_ about your dreaming,” Adam confirmed.

“And what did you think about it?”

“I thought— I think you’re an incredible person. I think that’s just a wonderful and beautiful gift you have. I—“

“Say it, Parrish.”

Adam could tell Ronan was preparing himself for what he must be thinking were going to be harsh words of rejection, and that’s what made him be truthful. He finally looked at him.

“I was terrified for you.”

“_For_ me?”

“Yes. Your nightmares were trying to kill you. You got hurt in your sleep. You— you let your dreams hurt you because you thought you deserved to die, Ronan.”

“I— I did?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s— hardcore. You into that? Is it true, that we dated?”

“It’s true.”

“Do I still have nightmares, after we started dating?”

“Sometimes.”

“Have I ever—“ Ronan’s question died when Adam shook his head.

“You’d never hurt me. That, I do know.”

“Okay, so— I’ve got more questions. But— I don’t really care, you know. About what Gansey said. Gansey’s my best friend, but he doesn’t get to decide who I date or who I don’t date. So if the Ronan you know is dating you, you don’t have to be worried about that.”

Adam couldn’t supress a small smile. Ronan frowned.

“I’m not worried. See? You hate me now, but you still look out for me. It’s kind of cute.”

“I don’t hate you, you dumbass. I just don’t trust you.”

“I know. That’s fine. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

“What was that, with my mom making you eat?” Ronan suddenly asked, the changing of subject so abrupt that Adam had to stop for a second to remember what he was talking about.

“I may have broken down in front of her earlier? It was pretty pathetic, so I guess she just felt pity. It’s fine, though. It was nice of her.”

“If what you say is true, I also broke down in front of you and this Henry guy. Did you think I was pathetic?”

“What? No, of course not, that’s—“ Adam narrowed his eyes when he realised what was Ronan’s line of thought. “Whatever. Next question.”

“Was I the second thing to be loved by you, then?”

“What?”

“You said that. We’re apparently dating. Do you love me?”

Adam opened his mouth. He closed it again.

“I do. I do love you.” It felt like cheating to tell this Ronan before he told _his_ Ronan, but at the same time if felt right. Adam didn’t want to lie to either of them. “I— I guess you’re the first _person_ I’ve ever loved. I dated Blue for a few weeks and I love Gansey too, but that’s different.”

“What about your family?”

“No, they— I don’t speak to my parents. My dad— My dad used to hit me. Hard. Like I lost my hearing on one ear because of it hard. So I don’t speak to them anymore.”

“Have you told me this before?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you tell the other me?”

“No, you— you were there when some of it was happening. I never told you. You’ve seen my nightmares and you were there to see my bruises, but I never said outloud. Until the trial, that is. And you never asked— you never pressed to get more information. But I felt like I could tell you if I needed to, you know? And that was enough.” He then realised he’d told too much. “Uh, sorry. Not you, obviously. Ronan, but not you,” he said, feeling his cheeks go red.

“I get what you meant.”

“Yeah. So— yeah. I never— For a very long time, I thought I wasn’t capable of love. That’s why— That’s why Gansey said what he said. Because he saw how I was when I left my parents’, which was about the time I was dating blue, and he thinks I’m gonna hurt you. I get that, really, so like I said it’s not a big deal.”

“But I was upset enough about it that I cried like a fucking baby, apparently.”

“No, you were more upset about the fact that Gansey doesn’t give you agency and that he can’t accept that you’re a different person than the Ronan he met,” he vehemently said. “Sorry. I’m probably upsetting you.”

“You’re not. I asked.”

“Right. So— next question.”

“Did you take your father to court? You mentioned a trial.”

“Yeah. He— I won, though. He didn’t go to jail or anything, but I won.”

“Did you want him to go to jail?”

“Not really. I don’t know. It would’ve put my mom in a funny situation, so I guess not. I did want him in prison after he violated his restraining order to come threaten me, though, but that was the one time and—“

“Your abuser dad violated a restraining order and threatened you? And he still didn’t go to jail? What the fuck?”

Adam realised he’d subconsciously started rubbing his hurt stomach when Ronan stood up and closed the distance between them and kneeled in front of Adam.

“I woke up with this,” he said, holding up his shirt. It was the first time he’d willingly shown a bruise to anyone, ever.

“What did I do?” Ronan asked. His hand hovered above Adam’s bruise, but he didn’t touch him. Adam guess he still didn’t want his touch, so he didn’t press.

“What?”

“What the fuck did I do when your fucker dad violated his fucking restraining order?”

“Well— nothing, because I didn’t tell you.”

“What? Why?”

“You were mad at me at the time. I didn’t tell anyone about the trial, so—“

“Why? We were friends by then, right? Why not tell me?”

“I don’t know. It felt— I felt—“

Adam’s fingers were anxiously twisting his shirt. Ronan pried them open and the wrinkled fabric covered the purple bruise. Ronan didn’t linger on his touch, but it felt like heaven for Adam.

He was crying before he could stop himself.

“You’re fucked up,” Ronan said.

“Pretty much.”

“Will my dad be okay?”

“Uh, yes. For now, I think.”

“I’m glad. Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome.”

Ronan sat back down, closer than before. Adam took advantage of the silence to try to calm himself.

“I’m so tired,” he muttered.

“Then sleep. I’ll watch out for you,” Ronan winked.

“Nothing’s gonna hurt me here, in Cabeswater,” Adam said confidently, but he closed his eyes anyway.

Ronan was there, Ronan was alright, Ronan was close and safe.

Adam let himself relax.

When he opened his eyes again, he was sprawled in Ronan’s bed at Monmouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter to go~  
It's already half-written (it was the very first thing I wrote for this fic, actually), so it should be up in the next few days ♥   
(still appreciate comments and kudos!)


	10. Chapter 10

It took Adam exactly two seconds to wake up, recognise where he was, discover Ronan’s familiar eyes looking fondly at him and jump out of the bed as if he’d been burnt.

He landed on Henry’s foot, and Henry cried.

“Why are you attacking me?” he exclaimed.

Adam couldn’t form coherent thoughts, so he just squealed for a bit. Ronan didn’t say anything either, but he rose from the bed and sat with his back to the wall.

It was pretty dark and Adam was too busy panicking again to really distinguish if the shadows on Ronan’s neck were part of his tattoo, but his head was shaven.

Henry nodded.

“Look at that,” he said. “You’d say we were in a well-plotted movie. What a world, man.” And he proceeded to announce he needed to take a piss and maybe dwell on the paradoxes of time travel while soaking in the shower.

Neither Ronan nor Adam acknowledged him as he left, but Adam was glad he’d thought of closing the door.

“If you’re having a panic attack, raise your hand,” Ronan said, finally, after a full minute in which Adam still couldn’t find his words.

Adam wanted to snort, but he choked instead and he really had to be looking like a pathetic mess, because Ronan approached him as carefully as he tended to the animals on his farm.

“Will I make it worse if I touch you?” he asked, and suddenly Adam couldn’t take it anymore.

He closed the distance between them and strangled Ronan in what he’d meant to be a hug but had somehow turned to be not unlike the desperate hold a castaway might have on a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean. But Adam felt like if he’d spent months fighting against angry currents and enraged storms and Ronan wasn’t pushing him away so he took advantage of how _good_ it felt to be held by him.

Ronan knew Adam. Ronan knew Adam and he was letting Adam squeeze him out and Adam thought he finally understood happiness, but _then_ Ronan started whispering comforting nonsense on his good ear and making circles on his back and Adam effectively melted.

It was a while after that Adam realised that, while he had kind of being taking an advanced course on how to keep functioning while your body refuses to let you breathe properly, Ronan might not be as proficient as he was on the subject, and he reluctantly let go a little.

“Hey,” Ronan said.

“Hey. Uh— sorry. I— yeah. I don’t know what happened.” He wanted to blow his nose but he wasn’t about to do that on the sleeve of his Aglionby sweater. “D’you have a napking or something?”

“A napkin.”

“Yeah. Or toilet paper, I don’t really mind.”

Ronan kept a kitchen roll next to his nightstand. Adam didn’t ask why, but he liked the idea of owning nightstands. He told Ronan so.

“You— want a fucking nightstand. Is that really how this conversation is going?” Ronan didn’t seem disgusted by the amount of snot Adam’s nose could hold, and Adam couldn’t help but cry a little bit more at the thought.

“Sorry, I’m just— I’m sorry.”

“Stop with the fucking whining, Parrish.”

“Okay. Okay, uh— So— What just happened?” He took the kitchen roll and put it between his crossed legs, adopting the same posture Ronan had before, with his back to the wall. Ronan sat next to him.

“I— It was a dream.”

“A dream? Like— _your_ dream?”

“Yeah. I— pulled you and Cheng inside, or something. I don’t know if you physically left here or what, but you were here when you woke up.”

“So— you remember me and Henry being there?”

“In the dream, yeah.”

Adam took a breath. And then another one, and another one.

“Okay. Okay, sorry for overreacting.”

“You didn’t.”

“I think my nails just won a competition with Chainsaw over who tore your shirt faster.”

Ronan’s smile shone in the dark.

“Chainsaw will forgive you. She fucking _adores_ you.”

Adam was preparing a retort, but he then remembered how his chest had constricted in that world without Chainsaw he’d visited and he blushed.

“I missed her. I missed Opal, too. I was so lost and I didn’t understand anything and— it didn’t feel like a dream, you know? It felt real and—“ he winced. “Sorry. Sorry, I almost forgot. I didn’t mean to imply your dreams are real. I _know_ they are. I’m just gonna shut up before I fuck it all up.”

He was very pointedly _not_ thinking about Aurora and Matthew.

“Did you miss me, too?” Ronan asked, with an even broader smile.

Had this been a normal conversation any other day of the week, Adam would’ve thrown a pillow at Ronan’s face, because he wasn’t going to risk him becoming too cheeky and because they didn’t talk seriously about feelings, in case it gave them something contagious, but this wasn’t a normal day.

In Adam’s book, Ronan should be mad. Adam had fucked up his adventure to the past, barely managing to save his dad from death, effectively orchestrating arguments and pissing people off in general, and while it had thankfully been all a dream, he’d just admitted dreams were very real things for Ronan.

But Ronan didn’t shout or snap at him— he held him and let him cry and blow his nose sitting on his bed. Ronan was _smiling_ and he had bags under his eyes but he wasn’t scowling or running away from him.

“A lot,” he said, with as much seriousness as he could muster, because it was the truth.

Ronan sobered up.

“Thanks,” he said.

Adam shook his head.

“I wanna say something and you’re not gonna like it but I wanna say it either way because if I don’t say it it’s gonna start feeling like a secret and I don’t wanna keep secrets from you. So—“

Ronan’s smile returned.

“Just spit it out, Parrish”

“Okay. I— well. I didn’t want your dad to die. In the past. In the dream, I mean. But if he’d been any other person, I wouldn’t have cared. I didn’t like him and I don’t agree with the decisions he made and— yeah. Sorry.” He winced again and looked down at the kitchen roll, because he couldn’t bear Ronan’s intense look while expressing his ugly opinions on the person Ronan had loved the most. “But I know you loved him so I wish you still had him in your life.”

“Okay,” Ronan said, after a pause. Adam swallowed.

“But— Ronan, I wouldn’t want to go back in time.”

_Not even for you_, he didn’t say, but when he risked a look he read the words on Ronan’s extremely sincere eyes. He kept looking, because Ronan deserved it.

“I am aware that that probably makes me the most selfish person in the world. Like I know I should put you first and two years ago you were happy and lucky and— yeah. I _want_ you to be happy, but I wouldn’t go back with you to be _there_ two years ago. I— Hell, I know it was a dream. I know it now, but— What I mean is— Your life was better then, but mine was— bad. Really bad, at that point—“ he trailed off. He didn’t even know why he was feeling this way, because it was very unlikely they were travelling back in time together and for real, but for some reason he suddenly saw himself at the trailer, on those months just before Aglionby, full of doubts and insults and pain and unhealthy doses of self-doubt in every awaken moment. “So yeah— I’m sorry,” he finished, barely above a whisper.

The room was silent for a moment, except for Chainsaw’s fluttering near the closet.

“I still love my dad,” Ronan finally said.

Adam nodded.

“I get that.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” Ronan said, so softly Adam was surprised. He’d expected more shouts and violence after mentioning Niall. He didn’t think Ronan was yet at a point where he could remember his dad without feeling angry.

He opened his mouth, but Ronan wasn’t finished. He had patiently listened while he put his very disorganized thoughts in order, so Adam reciprocated.

“I still love my dad and it’s true that I was happy when my family was whole and I miss it every single fucking day but— Adam, that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy ever again. I can. I _am_ happy now.”

“You are?” And why did that seem so unbelievable, when dawn was slowly crawling through the open window to caress Ronan’s careless smile, Adam wondered. Gansey’s voice was an echo in Adam’s ear, but he pretended he believed it was Cabeswater calling, and he didn’t listen.

“Yes. It’s a different kind of happy, though. It’s kind of stronger, because I can compare, you know?”

“Okay.”

“There’s more,” Ronan warned. Adam rested his head on the wall. “Put that overdeveloped brain of yours to use and _please_ remind me when and where have I ever told you to put me before surviving.”

Adam didn’t have to think for long.

“When you were going to let me kill you.”

“What?”

“Yeah,_ I know_, the demon did it. Whatever. But they were my hands, and I was there, and you weren’t defending yourself. So— If you _can_ put me first, I should be able to, too. But I can’t.”

“I don’t want you to!” There it was, finally. The shouting.

Ronan started pacing and went to pet Chainsaw, but she must have not been in the mood, because she crowed and left through the window. Ronan watched her leave.

“I’m— You know about the night horrors! That’s not fucking normal, I know. It’s not— I don’t want you to do the same. I don’t want you to go back there just because you think it’d be better for me. It wouldn’t. Even if I had my parents— Don’t you see? _That_ was the dream. It looked like a dream, but it can turn into a nightmare. I don’t want to go back to a time in which I haven’t met you.”

Ronan looked beautiful and holy, bathed in the morning light, in the middle of his familiar clutter of a bedroom.

Adam cried again, because he seemed to have forgotten how to put a lid to his tears.

“I can’t seem to stop crying today,” he sobbed, and put the kitchen roll to good use.

Ronan laughed and climbed back to the bed, gently taking the paper from Adam’s hands and dabbing at his tearful cheeks.

“You didn’t seem to mind when that happened to me yesterday,” he said. Adam nodded, and for a second he almost understood what Ronan was trying to say.

But then Ronan distracted him with a kiss, and Adam forgot all about the countdown he always kept in the background until he had to go to work and he also forgot about how Henry had said something about a shower but had never started the water. He forgot everything except for Ronan’s lips on his.

He closed his eyes and drew circles on Ronan’s shaved nape and he felt warm and safe and calm but _awake_.

This wasn’t a dream. This was _way_ better than a dream.

“Did you really break down in front of my mom?” Ronan asked. Adam laughed and bit Ronan’s earlobe instead of answering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it!  
As promised, the logic in this doesn't make any sense, but I'm here for the feelings and I hope you at least liked those! I've just poured my love for Adam in here and I've surprisingly discovered that I like Henry more than I thought (undoubtedly I'd appreciate him more as a character if he'd been introduced earlier in the story). I honestly thought the Gray Man and Maura would have a scene together but Ronan stole that time slot for himself and we're not blaming him.  
If I'm ever so overcome with feelings as I was when I started writing this, my next fic will probably feature Aurora more deeply (I already knew I liked her but now I just looove writing her).
> 
> I highly appreciate comments and kudos ♥


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